Father Figure
by Thelia Roe
Summary: Paul Karofsky thought he'd done right by his son, yet watched him degenerate into a thug just the same. Blaine practically performed for his father's approval, but was given no love for the trouble. When the two meet, they inflame each other's injuries.
1. Chapter 1

For no reason more sensible than spending the drive in each other's company, Kurt had ridden to the latest after-school meeting of McKinley's PFLAG in Blaine's car. Kurt's recent return to the campus of his hometown had put a strain on the link between them - a mild tug, barely perceptible if one or the other was feeling confident, but difficult to ignore on days like today: an unexpected, out-of-sync meeting of the organization's members to discuss a summer fundraiser.

They'd argued, in the tender and accommodating way arguments happened between them, just before leaving Kurt's house. Now, the lack of a resolution hung between them, an unwelcome third party. Kurt was vigilant in his undertaking of Dave Karofsky as a project in redemption, and Blaine privately, perhaps even obliviously, resented that he'd be left on his own so that his boyfriend could spend time 'bettering' someone they both should've hated.

One way or another, it encroached on an afternoon they would otherwise have spent together, and though neither could determine where the friction began, it was clear when they hung together outside the car for a tight-lipped goodbye.

"It won't take long," Kurt promised, passive and coaxing at first, trying to smooth the gravel between them. But when Blaine was poised to relent, powerless to that particular tone, Kurt decided better of being apologetic, and declared righteously, "This is_ important_, Blaine. You should be proud that we're making a difference, here. You should be supportive of what I'm trying to do."

A ghost was hiding behind that 'we,' and when it came time for Blaine to challenge it out loud, his resolve dried up and he hid from the implications. His eyes found the ground, a gesture of submission, head nodding in pretended amicability. Kurt was aware he'd aimed too well, but still bristled, cat-like, in defense. He wasn't about to admit he was wrong. Instead he left a kiss on the corner of Blaine's mouth, which Blaine answered with a smile, and crossed the parking lot to the school's front entrance.

Blaine leaned at the hip against his car's trunk as he disappeared, watching long after there was nothing to watch, and debated the ways he ought to spend the next 90 minutes. If he wasn't careful, 'in miserable anxiety' would be the answer.

David Karofsky was becoming a rot on his relationship.

He and Kurt would spend days at a time enamored with each other, limbs locked in a tangle down Kurt's couch, watching questionable sitcoms on mute and creating their own voice-overs, or trading trivialities on the phone. Moments of privacy from family and friends were coveted with such eagerness that their first kisses, whenever they were alone, began painfully, teeth colliding and skin pinching against more skin, until they found a rhythm and relaxed. It was all either of them ever wanted.

Then the first and third Thursday of each month would come, Kurt would attend his PFLAG meetings, and an insecurity would begin in Blaine that he could neither articulate or ignore. He tried to reason with himself, assuming it was simple jealousy, because it felt so very similar, but even at his most honest he knew that the word fell flat.

In the midst of frustrating self-analysis and the uncomfortable feeling David's name gave him every time it came up, Kurt announced that the group would be holding their first fundraiser within the next 6 weeks, and would meet today, a Sunday, to organize. A Sunday. His Sunday. Their Sunday.

A Friday would've been fine - a Friday could be a movie with the boys from Dalton, or dinner in town with Mercedes and Sam. A Friday could be catching a game with Burt. Even a Saturday - Saturdays might be family time for the Hummel/Hudson clan, or they might be spent with each other. Blaine could've handled losing a Saturday.

But not their Sunday. They'd established a tradition of Sundays. Wile the rest of the world ran their last minute errands before another week began, Kurt and Blaine met early in the day, drank coffee, walked circles around the rural town, teased each other's tastes in clothing stores or read poetry aloud with ludicrous accents at Barnes & Noble. Sundays belonged to them.

"It's one Sunday," Kurt had told him at first, patiently. Then, later, when Blaine couldn't shake the dismay, it was, "Your problem isn't that I'm going, is it? It's who else will be there." And this wasn't patient at all, but sharp and sour, a tone from Kurt he'd heard used on others a thousand times, but that rarely visited him.

He'd answered simply but with characteristic honesty, "It's not unreasonable for me to dislike him."

"You have to be kidding me," Kurt had told him. He said it with more disappointment than upset, but it hurt worse for its weakness. Blaine wanted to explain it to him, that Kurt was like this, sometimes - he fell in love immediately, for instance, where Blaine had taken months. It was part of the fundamental difference between them.

Kurt could change on a whim, and hold dearly to convictions that were brand new, while Blaine was still struggling to catch up and be certain each fresh development worked with his mind's existing landscape. He wasn't ready to believe that Dave was a changed kid, even if Kurt had already decided it was so. He might've been calmer, and he might've been inspired by extenuating circumstances not to be violent any longer, but it wasn't enough to convince him that the current wasn't still running just beneath the surface. As long as Kurt spent time around him, Blaine worried - worried that an off-handed comment on a bad day might make him snap, and how.

A car door slamming shut from two rows over pulled him from his mindless lack of action. He turned to the sight of a slump-shouldered David Karofsky, talking lowly with his father. A cold, cold feeling crept through Blaine.

His father. A bully's father. The man who'd raised another man and watched him turn into a delinquent. Kurt had mentioned Paul Karofsky to him once or twice - the conversations in Figgins's office, the explanations he gave, the agreeable remorse. Even from here, a few yards away, Blaine could see the expressions that moved across Mr. Karofsky's face as he talked to his son - each of them strained, each of them caring. Whether he felt shame at his son's actions, pride at their momentary lapse or fear for his future, he cared. It was all Blaine could see. His own dad's face occurred to him like a week-old dream, and he ached.

Whether he was motivated to approach as Dave made his way across the parking lot by that particular ache, or by the frustration of an argument with Kurt, Blaine didn't give himself a chance to determine. Rather than strap himself into the driver's seat and head into town to find a way to entertain himself for 90 minutes, he found his feet disobedient and brazen, treading over painted white lines on their way to Paul Karofsky.

"You look familiar," he lied when he approached the man, who'd just opened his door to leave.

Paul gestured with his chin at Dave, who slipped through McKinley's entrance and was gone. "Dave's father, Paul Karofsky." He extended his hand with the fluidity of someone who'd done so a thousand times before; his face was a stone, his body still, only the fingers moved.

Blaine introduced himself with a first name, nothing more, then included a pointed, "Ah," as pretended as not recognizing Paul for who he was. Paul was perceptive to the sound, or to the quick twitch at Blaine's brow that suggested disdain.

"Not a friend of yours, then." "Not a friend of anybody _I_ know." He chastised himself privately for the disrespect, but didn't amend it. And he refused to call David a friend of Kurt's.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Paul returned, distracted, half-aware. He eyed the door again, watching the spot his son had just flooded, as if he'd still be there to study and observe.

Blaine's rebellious alter ego, the unhealthy little twinge inside him that refused to be silenced by propriety, asked, "Do you buy this? This change in him, 'the new Dave?'"

Paul's shift when he answered wasn't a physical one, but something in his demeanor hit a roadblock and turned back. "I have to." He started a second sentence that hung thick on his mouth. At the last second, he changed his mind, and repeated with a painful simplicity, "I have to. He's my son."

Blaine tasted the copper sting of envy and, without warning, without meaning to, he hated David Karofksy freshly. "Fair enough."

"You don't, then? Don't, uh - 'buy it?'"

"I'd like to, I just don't think it happens that quickly. Apparently I'm the only one." Sarcasm burned from Blaine, and he twisted his lip into a derisive sneer that suited his eager features not at all.

"You seem to have more than a bit of hostility towards me," Paul announced, aware of Blaine's anger as he'd be of a sudden downpour, but unmoved.

Blaine's tongue was a hard thing to hold, these days - was Kurt unraveling him, unpinning the little ribbons that kept him mannered and in control? His confidence had become verbal, it had lost its sense of play. "I just don't like your son."

Paul looked toward the road nearby, watching cars as they passed, and slid his hands into his pockets. It was a tick, by now - he might as well have kept his courage in those pockets, for as often as his fingers found them when he felt tense. "It seems to be a popular opinion."

The vulnerability in the gesture made Blaine regret his lapse in tact. Here was a man whose son caused the people around him nothing but upset, and he seemed, if anything, resigned to it, ruefully accepting. With a teenager's naivety, Blaine tried to imagine Paul's position. Did he still love Dave? Was he concerned about him, as he seemed to be, or did he punish him behind closed doors? Did he blame himself? He couldn't help comparing Paul with his own father, remote and stony, and the similarities between them were slight at best.

In deciding that Paul's defeated acceptance was a kind of fatherly loyalty, Blaine became bitterly jealous. He'd been a good kid, and his father slipped further and further from him every year. What had David done right that he'd done so wrong? He muttered an awkward apology, watched the cars with Paul, and kept quiet for a couple of heartbeats.

"So am I," Paul said. "He was a good boy, you know. I still have faith in that side of him."

"I'll believe it if it lasts, I guess," was the best Blaine could muster. He shouldn't have come over here. It hurt, and felt far away from him - one of those conversations adults were meant to have in a low voice two rooms away when they thought you were sleeping.

Paul changed, then, a sad, solitary man no more, looking Blaine's veiled dismissal dead in the eye. He was confident, certain - Blaine could've sworn he looked taller.

"Blaine? That was your name, right? Blaine, I'd like to take a walk, if you don't mind. I don't want there to be any misconception, here - what David did is inexcusable. I don't understand it, I don't condone it. But there -is- more to him. Would you walk with me for a while, hear me out?"

"I don't mean to be difficult, but I'm not the best candidate for long, educational talks about the secret wonders of Dave Karofsky."

"A few minutes of your time. I've heard just about everyone's side of the story, so far, and I'd like the opportunity to reciprocate. And if I'm not entirely off the mark, here, you've got more than old anger staked in your feelings about him?" His voice broke upward, leading, encouraging, feeling around between the lines of Blaine's refusal to consider, looking for the soft spot where he guessed it became more personal.

Blaine was powerless to the intrusion. He agreed with a half-hearted lift of his shoulder, a gesture his friends recognized as playful and all-welcoming, but was paler and less significant, here. Paul lead with his hands still pocketed, chest out and his steps measured; he directed Blaine's attention like an employer as they moved away from the parking lot, the older man explaining, the younger man raptly attentive.


	2. Chapter 2

Of the hour and a half that Paul Karofsky and Blaine Anderson circled the McKinley parking lot, waiting for the meeting to disperse, they spent only 20 minutes in total focused on Dave.

Paul's sullied delight over his son's perfect childhood, though not at all what Blaine had imagined, remained of little interest to him. If anything, it was all the more frustrating that, as the once-promising son of a decent man, Dave had still turned into a hateful and aggressive heathen.

Where were his motivations? Was a good family standing behind his every move not enough? His mother was gone, but "gone," in this case, meant living in a two-story townhouse less than ten miles away. Dave spent weekends there during the school year, and now that summer was approaching, Paul and his ex-wife, Diane, shared two weeks on, two weeks off. It didn't sound like much of a tragedy, and Paul's stories did nothing but draw Blaine deeper into his sudden upset, his blind, hot envy.

Discomfort pulsed out of Blaine like a second step. He began reacting to each of Paul's sentences with uncharacteristic bluntness and derisive snorts, if anything at all, shaking his head from time to time, looking disrupted and faraway.

Paul took notice of the awkward responses and asked, almost without expecting an answer, "Something else going on with you, kid?"

It was all the incentive Blaine needed to push Dave from the conversation. Driven to impropriety by the nearness of a man who looked like everything his father wasn't, Blaine began to talk. They circled the building, Paul leading by a step, Blaine gesturing frustradedly beside him, and he talked. Perhaps a bit too much, perhaps a bit too personally, but Paul never objected.

He listened, expression neutral, to stories of rejection and obliviousness, to attempts Blaine had made that were either ignored or derided, and attempts made by his father that Blaine always saw straight through.

Aaron Anderson wasn't a musical man to start with. He had little patience for anything that he considered to be frivolity, and Blaine's interest in drama and the arts meant only that there was one more thing Blaine had to say that Aaron couldn't relate to.

When their distance from one another upset him (as it did, from time to time), Aaron's proud personality demanded that he attempt to make amends by introducing Blaine to something he liked, rather than the other way around.

When these experiments failed in Blaine's youth, Aaron would decide cooly, out loud, "Well, kid, I don't know what you want from me. You're never willing to meet halfway."

As a result, Blaine eventually stopped admitting to his disinterest, naively certain that having something in common (even something pretended) might ignite the connection between them that other fathers & sons were practically flaunting.

Little by little, he built up a second skin of false compliance - he faked his enthusiasm, faked his eagerness to participate; he tested his ability to be an actor whenever his father was around, forcing his way into an appreciation for things such as classic rock, classic cars and epic television documentaries.

He asked Aaron questions about his prized collection of aged scotches, learned the difference between a $30.00 lighter from his grandfather's cigar shop and the $150.00 lighter Blaine's mother bought him from Neiman Marcus for Christmas (one was 'reliable,' the other 'unnecessary'), and listened without so much as a yawn to Aaron's warnings about young, dumb men buying stocks and old, overconfident men planning poorly for their retirement.

Aaron was full of opinions. He dissected the world through his cynicism and built compartments for every human type he'd found. He had a name for everything, and an immediate understanding of whether or not a person he'd just met would be of any use to him in the future. It was, to a young man's eye, something admirable. All Blaine needed was to suggest the right idea, and Aaron would answer him in ever-more-lengthy bouts of verbal passion.

Blaine rested easier for the success. Near his 15th birthday, they were finally having conversations. He'd ask Aaron what he thought of something, Aaron would tell him, and Blaine would study whatever it was that his response favored.

"I prefer horror movies that leave a bit up to the imagination, but aren't too fussy about hiding the gore," Aaron once said. That alone became a week-long journey through the bowels of the internet for Blaine to unearth a handful of titles they could watch together.

"I'm starting to come around to Apple products," sent Blaine on an eager dive into PC magazines and Apple support forums to understand separate versions, common glitches and improvements - Aaron could talk, Blaine could listen, and as long as only one of them was going through the motions, it was fine. They'd developed a relationship, no matter how rocky the beginning, and they could both be at peace until it came more naturally.

18 months he lived in that state of euphoria. 18 months of the two of them, talking, laughing, leaving the house on modest adventures. 18 months of success, until a spontaneous boyhood dishonesty dismantled the fairytale.

Blaine wasn't an underhanded child. He rarely lied and almost never acted out. But now and again, just for the rush of it, he'd listen in on the muted talks of grownups - find out what he was getting for Christmas, or how his father's date with a coworker went - anything an adult wouldn't want to tell him outright. It was one of those rare delights that came of knowing he could be caught and punished; a troublemaker's habit leftover from a childhood entirely too mannered.

The conversation burned with tension from the kitchen entrance, a door and a hallway away from where Blaine crept, ears alerted to the sound of his father's indecisive anger. He wavered, he was stammering, he began sentences and discarded them like broken glass, dangerous and offensive. Blaine's stomach churned with guilt and a giddy anxiety - it'd be a good one to spy on. He heard 'Laura' from his father's mouth - aunt Laura, his mother's sister.

Angela Anderson lived with aunt Laura, now - she'd lived there for nearly five years, somewhere in Michigan. They called themselves "separated," refusing to divorce, refusing to be married.

The fractured couple speak about important things directly, now, after more than a year of Laura's patient message-relaying cleared the way, but when it came to day-to-day issues, when Aaron had to navigate his unexpected domesticity with a full-time job, it was Laura who came to his aid. The tradition was stuck firlmy into their family dynamic since the brief, uncomfortable era during which Angela and Aaron spoke only loudly or through lawyers, but Aaron still needed to know which was Blaine's current dentist and who to call when he wouldn't make it to school.

Blaine neared the kitchen on stealthy, socked feet, one side of his face aimed at the wall. He stopped when his hand touched the decorative molding - out of sight, but near enough for clarity.

Regret crawled up to meet him the very minute he could piece the words together.

"I'm out of ideas, Laura. I'm out of ideas. I don't know what to do with this kid anymore - he's always around, always underfoot, and what do I say to him? What am I supposed to say?"

For a minute, Blaine argued with himself that it wasn't as bad as it sounded. It was a misunderstanding, taken out of context. But he didn't keep listening to prove himself right. He kept listening because he couldn't move. He'd been cemented to the spot by a blend of disappointment and humiliation, realizing how much of the past 18 months had been approached with only one side's enthusiasm.

Aaron was quiet for a moment, then demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?" Another silence. Then, "I'm out of ideas. I told you. I don't know what to do."

Blaine knew in his bones how Laura answered. "Just love him." He knew. He could nearly hear it, he could see her, faded blonde hair and just a little too much makeup she didn't need, "Just love him."

"That's the problem - what if I don't? I don't think I do." A pause, Aaron interrupted. "No, I know it's . . . I'm just lost, here, Laura. I can't stand myself like this. I'm no father."

A low, wild hum started in Blaine's ears, worked through him, left him shuddering. He recognized it later as panic, a fresh kind of panic, not at all like what he'd felt watching those ancient horror films, not at all like the feeling of falling off a bicycle, no. This was the kind of panic that spread slow and grew, malignant, the kind that followed news of a lover dying, silence where there should've been sound. He wanted to enter the room and be reassuring, tell Aaron that he was a father, a good father, that these things took time and they were making such progress! Instead he went rigid, listening longer, swamped with guilt.

Aaron continued. "It was different with Angela. He was born and she adored him, and that's just how it was. I went to work, she took care of the kid. Now she's gone, and he's here, and what do I do? I look at him, I look at that face, I know what he wants and I can't give it to him. He wants his dad to love him."

Aaron wasn't trying to be cruel. It was worse that way. If there'd been even a hint of malice in his voice, Blaine could've hated him for being a lousy parent, could've called him a monster later in life to soothe the ache that began right then and never left for even a minute.

Instead, all he heard was the shame and regret of a man who'd tried for years to love his son and failed. He was too old to believe at the surface that he was to blame, but too young and insecure not to let the doubt in, not to wonder somewhere soft and needing what it was he'd fucked up as a boy to drive his parents off.

He left the hall, wrongly aware, too aware of what discontent it would cause Aaron to know he'd been heard. He had his own guilt to grapple with. It had never occurred to him to back off, to approach with more subtlety, he'd thrown himself at Aaron like a lovesick dog. Pathetic, he told himself later, ridiculous.

Blaine let their hobbies fade week by week, released his hold on the time they spent together, and father & son went their separate ways at length - sharing a house, nothing more.

He said as much to Paul a year later, self-deprecating yet sincere, trying as he often did to deflect and invite at once; hear me, he urged, but please, please don't see me.

It was unexpected, probably inappropriate, but that was the progression they followed from the initial effort to realize Dave's hidden virtues. Blaine needed to talk, and Paul needed someone to listen to, he needed someone to trust him, to rely, even just a little, on what he had to offer. He'd envisioned fatherhood with such pride and anxiety, with never any doubt about whether or not he was up to the task. Dave slipping so deep, so quickly, it had leveled him inside, microscopic explosions taking apart the structure of his confidence piece by piece. He needed a lost boy, like Blaine.

Blaine's retelling of his faulty childhood was delivered with such withdrawn modesty that Paul wondered if his young friend thought it'd be an inconvenience to hear. He interjected rarely, thoughtfully, never offering advice except that he continue speaking. But when they returned for the third time to the car they'd started off from over an hour ago, Paul stopped him short, commanded his attention with the touch of two fingertips on his sweatered shoulder.

"I don't have the luxury of pretending I understand what it means to be the perfect father, Blaine. Not anymore. I want to tell you what you need to hear - that it isn't your fault, that it's his problem, that you deserve better. I'd like to advise that the two of you consider therapy, even, or that you live with your mother, something. But at this point, even my faith is shaken in my ability to resolve conflict."

Blaine dismissed the effort with a wave and jerk of his head. "It's fine. I don't know what I was hoping to get from spitting all that out, anyway. It's just been on my mind."

Paul shook his head. "No, I'm not saying I'll forget about it. Your situation is unfair, and you need an ally. That, I can handle. That, I know how to be."

The fingers that asked for Blaine's focus drifted to a gray suit pocket, then returned with a card case. He isolated a single slip and, before giving himself a moment to question his judgment, to consider the possible consequences, offered it to Blaine. "So if you need to talk to someone, even if it's to say the same things you said today, you call me."

"What about-,"

"Just call me. If you need to. Even if I never hear from you again, I'll feel better knowing you've got an option besides handling it on your own. Kids aren't supposed to have to handle things like this on their own."

He doesn't deserve you as a father, Blaine thought, accepting the card and looking up to the school's entrance. The meeting wasn't over yet, but it would be soon, and he wanted to be back in his own car and far from anywhere Dave would be by that time.

"Thank you."

He'd never do it. He knew he'd never do it. He'd never call Paul Karofsky to "talk."


	3. Chapter 3

"Let me guess," Blaine said into the mouthpiece of his cell-phone, substituting the gamble for a proper hello. "Catastrophe has struck, and you need a rain check?'" His voice was amicable, but burnt underneath; he joked without humor.

By now he knew what to expect when Kurt's number blinked on the home screen an hour before they were supposed to meet. A few months ago, it would've been a last-minute coquetry - he'd once texted to say, 'Just making sure you didn't get swept off your feet by one of these smooth Ohio playboys before I drive all the way over.'

Kurt was out of breath before he started talking - he'd been preparing for this, stomach in knots, loathe to disappoint Blaine again. "I'm sorry."

Blaine echoed him, finishing the sentence as he did. "What disasters will my favorite philanthropist be taking care of this time?" He transitioned easily back to flirtation - it was, as romance went, the one area he knew how to visit comfortably, without giving too much away. Nevermind that it meant they'd regressed back to a place where he felt the need to restrain himself.

Kurt made a hard, animal sound in his throat - disgusted, outraged. He was ready to tell a story.

"We were _finished_. Everything was in order. Fliers up, room rented, prize tables meticulously organized, I worked magic. And then," a dramatic pause; Blaine could picture him waving his hands as a prop to frame the new obstacle. "The cousin - Figgins's cousin, the photographer slash poet slash candle maker slash lunatic backed out on us. I said, 'fine, we just won't have professional pictures, it's not the end of the world,' and Figgins said -"

A static rushed into Blaine that drowned out the sound of Kurt's voice. He couldn't bring himself to listen, no matter how earnest the attempt. He knew what Kurt would say, and he knew it was all true: that someone had made a mistake, that there was a new complication with the dining space, that a local business sponsor had backed out. That a photographer needed to be replaced at the last second. Each upset meant another dead date, another heartfelt promise to "make it up" to him. And he would. Kurt kept those particular promises.

But guilty as it made him, Blaine was tired of things being made up to him. It wasn't intentional, he fought the frustration whenever he could, but it won. It won out every time. He couldn't help but realize that Kurt's original motivation for starting the club was David, he couldn't help the understanding that David often joined him on these expeditions to keep the fundraiser on track (along with other members) . . . he couldn't help seeing where he'd been ranked, no matter how sweet Kurt's eventual comfort.

Higher notes in Kurt's voice snapped him back to the conversation in time to catch, "- and just between you and me, I question her ability to raise an additional $200 through honorable means, so, I'd avoid calling a phone sex hotline in the near future. Just to play it safe."

They laughed together. Blaine loved that sound. He let himself be warmed by it, closed his eyes, took a breath. He had a role to play. Another performance waiting. He pulled on the suit of an Understanding and Supportive Boyfriend, and told Kurt genuinely, "It's alright. Call me if you get things settled early, otherwise, I'll see you Sunday?"

"Sunday," Kurt answered, in the tone of an oath being taken. "I swear, I won't make a habit of this."

_You already have._ "I know, it's fine. I've decided to love you anyway."

"I love you, too - you're the best!" The assurance was followed by a cracking quiet. He'd already hung up.

He waited five minutes before dialing Paul's number - the third time in the month since they'd met.

**0000000**

Thinking about it after the fact, Blaine could recognize the self-destructive urge that was motivating him when he started dialing numbers once he and Paul hung up that day.

It looked innocent at the time. His boyfriend canceled a date, but it was still Friday night. Why shouldn't he find something fun to do? Why not belatedly agree to attend a harmless summer party with his classmates and their friends?

In reality, in the private, honest little core of him, he knew better than to expect certain names to arrive without distractions he'd have trouble getting on his own - a bottle of wine, a joint, a flask stolen from the decorative bar of one of the estates belonging to Dalton parents - something to dull his pettiness a bit, blunt his guilt, and veil the sensation of losing yet another man's attention. In reality, he wanted an excuse not to be sober.

Three hours later, music thudded a wild, repetitive beat through the cement bones of Jonah Crane's basement, and Blaine was surrounded by familiar faces; schoolmates and their boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends.

The wet wooden smell of marijuana drifted over him and away again, chilled liquid in shades of amber tipped awkwardly into coffee mugs, and a pair of girls Blaine didn't know experimented with a small square of paper and stimulants stolen from a medicine cabinet respectively. He neither minded nor participated in the latter two, a neutral observer - nothing that could addict him, nothing that could kill. Even in recklessness, he retained a bit of maturity, try as he had in the past to drink it dead.

He shared a joint puff-for-puff with another Warbler, mixing shot after shot of Amaretto sours - equal parts sweetness & sting. Paul had mentioned them in passing, once. He told Blaine via email that his day at work called for a few.

"Where's your Siamese twin tonight?," Trent asked on his exhale, dancing loosely nearby, one beat off the music.

"Something came up," Blaine answered.

"Again?"

"Again. It's fine, it gave me a free night to spend with you guys." His mood was delicate. He didn't want to dwell on the subject.

A boy he'd met twice put a hand on his shoulder, dramatic in his pretended sympathy; a consolation for the grieving. "Can't keep 'em satisfied. All those smooth moves gone to waste."

Blaine came up with a smile only half-forced. He was starting to unwind. It mattered less and less, out with a breath, out with the smoke, the kinks were beginning to straighten. Besides which, these boys weren't used to seeing him abandon his charm and turn sensitive. They expected banter, retort, brotherly battles of words. He dropped his head back against the crest of the chair and gloated obscenely, "I keep them_ very_ satisfied. For all you know, he needed a night to recover."

The good-natured laughter of misbehaving men peppered the space around him. Deflection, retreat and safety. They'd slap his shoulder for the naughty implications as surely as if he'd been any one of them professing their prowess with a woman, and move on.

But a joke set free was hard to contain, and when he was ready to change the subject, someone let out a jovial holler about getting Kurt on the phone to tell him what he was missing, and that they were missing him. Drunk, oblivious support echoed through the small crowd around Blaine, who shook his head but could not stop his throat from spitting out giggles.

Because he looked happy, because he felt happy, they thought he was happy, and pressed on. Lowered inhibitions and sensitive senses of humor - Blaine was helpless to the current he'd begun sailing.

Jeff, who crept up from behind, dove his arm into the space between Blaine's leg and the chair, reaching for the phone in his pocket. "Courtesy call sounds good."

Blaine answered with a bright, boyish sound, rolling in to pin Jeff by the elbow, initiating a wrestle that was assisted in the other boy's favor by Nick's playful hands. Between the two of them, Jeff was able to hook the cell phone with his fingers and slip it out of the tangle of limbs. He went through the motions of dialing a number, though his fingers never touched a key, then he pressed it to his ear with one hip thrust out.

"Kurt!," he barked, straightening his back and adopting an authoritarian strut. "You have abandoned the sorry specimen of Blaine Anderson one time too many. He's half a man at this point. How do you defend this neglect?"

"Dick, give it back," Blaine ordered, smile fat and fully formed on his face as he swatted at Nick's attempts to overtake him. Neither boy would let the other have a victory, even when the item they'd been grappling over was gone.

Jeff continued, pausing as if another voice were on the line. He covered the mouthpiece and relayed to Blaine, "He says it's the hair, that the Ross Gellar look is over. He's sorry you had to find out this way."

Blaine faked dismay, crowing frantically, "He said he liked my hair for who it was!"

For a minute, even with his name such a fixture in the conversation, Blaine wasn't troubled by the frayed connected between he and Kurt. Drunkenness danced in him, blotting out unpleasant thoughts and flushing him clean, a boy at a party with friends, nothing more. He was fine. Simply, calmly, serenely fine.

Jeff didn't have it in him to be cruel. He just hit too near to the injury, that was all. He couldn't have known how Blaine's face would change, how it would _warp_ like that, how it wouldn't be fine anymore when he purred into the phone at his imaginary Kurt and said, "Oh, you've got another man! Is that a fact?"

It was supposed to be a joke - harmless as the others - and Blaine had been so animated in playing along! But Jeff took note of the change in his demeanor, dark and miserable as it became, and he wasn't alone. Nick let his hands drop from where they clamped around Blaine's elbows, Wes put his soda down a few feet away, gaze suddenly rapt.

Blaine stood up, palms out, briefly oblivious to the questioning stares. His phone was returned in guilty silence. It relieved him at first to be back in control, but relief left fast when he appraised the damage.

Even the music seemed less jovial, now, and of all the many bodies clustered in sub-groups or dancing in the center of the basement, the five around Blaine were the only ones gone still.

He had to fix it. He had to make it alright, or be responsible for ruining their evening. It was doable. With a little bit if maneuvering, Blaine swore, he'd turn it back around and sweep this untidy moment out of the room.

Invoking a voice that trembled with exaggeration, Blaine laid a hand across his chest and told Jeff, "I know what's going on, here." Jeff's brow twisted, which was Blaine's cue to continue, high-pitched, "It's you. You're the other man!"

Jeff was an easy target. He came back with a grin, head cocked as if he'd known it for a ruse all along, and dug his knuckles into Blaine's shoulder. "Look at me, man - you knew the risks."

Tension left the gathered one heartbeat at a time, pushed away in the short silence between songs on Jonah's stereo. Wes was the last to succumb. He was looking Blaine over like an antique for hidden cracks, but he, too, fell victim to the strong beat and alluring conversations cropping up again beside him.

Blaine could relax for his effort, could focus on the scorched stain of marijuana at the back of his throat, the loose, irregular awareness of blood moving through him. He could focus on the dismissal of Kurt and Dave's burgeoning relationship, exorcise it from him, wraithlike, banished. He moved back into the crowd to dance, stick-limbed and graceless, full of smoke and alcohol.

Before the party began, Blaine could see the two of them in his mind, Dave and Kurt. Awkward, anxious, moving near each other, stumbling into a kiss that turned passionate and breaking apart with a smile . . . Now, disconnected from the ache, flinging his head from side to side and cheering at anyone close enough to hear him, he couldn't see Kurt or Dave at all.

What was Dave Karofsky anyway, what? Silly little thug, that was all, brain-dead and a bully, he was nothing. He'd stay right where he was all his life, whether or not his behavior improved, and Blaine decided through the fog of confused substance that he simply didn't care. Forget him.

But Paul. Poor Paul. Proud, perfect Paul who adored his heathen son, yet listened, permissive, whenever Blaine forgot himself and insulted him during their phone calls. It wasn't right. He'd been taking advantage of how good a listener Paul was. He needed to tell him - it's all okay, now, I'm not even angry about it. I'm not.

Three staggered steps away from the circle of carpet where he'd been dancing, Blaine pulled the phone back out from his pocket and scrolled straight by two missed text notifications to highlight Paul's number and hit send.

Paul answered on the fifth ring, and Blaine felt a thrill bone-deep when he did, because he said his _name_, he knew who was calling. "Blaine?," he asked, followed immediately by, "You okay?" A thrill bone-deep.

"Hey," he chirped into the phone, "Hey, Paul - _Paul,_ old pal. Pallywag." He was clever enough to himself to be in pieces, but tried in earnest to recover. "I thought you should know it's fine now, everything. I'm fine with Dave, I'm not - I'm fine."

Paul's voice was humorless and tired. "Start over," he demanded, devoid of charm.

"I'd love to," Blaine replied, with a little bark of a laugh. "Maybe not from the beginning beginning, but close enough. Maybe, like, before I made an ass of myself with dad, or before I met Kurt. You know, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't even know you? I wouldn't know you, and I wouldn't know your son. Who, by the way, has a habit of fucking things up even when he's_ not_ acting like a lunatic. But it's okay. I don't care anymore."

Belatedly, Blaine realized he was swearing, and laughed again, apart at the seams, breaking through, loosened from himself.

Paul sighed on the other end of the line. Blaine could picture him in that moment. He'd be lying in bed, an early night for someone so very responsible, and he'd have dragged one of those wide, well-kept palms down his face, peppered with evening's stubble. "I get it," Paul said after a minute. "I get it, you're drunk."

"I'm a_ little_ drunk."

"Very rebellious of you."

Blaine missed the sarcasm. "Thank you!"

Before Paul could chastise the loose translation, he heard a rustling, a series of snorts and chuckles, then Blaine crying with mirth, _everyone wants my phone!_

A new voice came on the line, lighter, more disrupted by teenage experimentation. "He's more than just drunk, the little scamp," the voice said, theatrical by nature and covering Blaine's excited squeals with a false accent. It didn't matter that he didn't know who he was talking to.

Paul sat up in bed, broken from his disappointed drowsiness by the implications. Sneaking a few beers from the fridge was one thing. Drugs were another issue entirely, a more troubling one if he wasn't at home. "What does that mean?"

The voice dodged his question and continued, "Frankly, we're all a little dismayed by this wild streak, Mr. So-and-so. We're young, impressionable boys. We can't be mixed up with this kind of negative element."

Paul snapped his fingers for the boy's attention, but the effect was somewhat less commanding when nobody could see it. "Where are you calling from?"

Another scramble of bodies crashed through the phone line before he heard Blaine again, but he was distracted by the phony fight and too entertained to talk. Under any other circumstance, it might have made Paul smile. Blaine sounded happy. The sound was new to him, alien, intriguing. It would've been the best he'd ever sounded had Paul not known its derivation.

When Blaine remembered him hanging on the other end, the first thing he said was, "He didn't mean that," sparing not even a moment's apology for the disrespect and, instead, dragging Paul into the conversations of foolish teenagers. "They love me, really. Wild streak and all."

Paul's humor was a pit of sand to start with, dry and gritty, he laughed at things that left others feeling scraped and conflicted. Now it was nothing at all, an absence replaced by paternity's stern upset. "Listen to me, Blaine. I want your attention, I want it exclusively. You_ listen_ to me, or I'm hanging up this phone, and it'll be the last time we speak to one another."

The threat dropped cold into Blaine's stomach and flowered from there, refining his focus and inspiring a bitter fear. It should not have mattered so much. He knew instantly that it should not have mattered so much. His obedience to Paul was based on nothing but a frantic desperation to remain in his favor.

"I'm listening to you, Paul. I always do. I always listen to you." It was important that he not laugh again, but it bubbled up behind his mouth, a nervous energy he wanted to expel.

"'I understand' is plenty."

"I understand."

"Tell me where you are. I'm coming to get you."

**00000000**

They'd traveled nearly a mile before either of them spoke. Blaine's forehead pressed against the cold glass of the passenger window, so hard it seemed he wanted to push through it and tumble onto the road, and Paul was expressing his disapproval with two tight fists on the wheel and the rapid blinking that typically warned of his moods.

"What happened, here," Paul asked, fixed on the road, voice flat. "I was under the impression you were a smart kid."

Blaine shot out a sigh and curled deeper into the seat. His tone was dismissive. "I don't know."

"Not good enough."

Blaine could've given a dozen excuses for why he'd used so cliche an escape, could've drawn up the list at a moment's notice and reminded Paul of the cracks reappearing in his life's porcelain surface, but Paul knew them as well as he did, and wasn't asking him to explain the want. He was asking him to explain the action - the choice to soften those problems as he had. He'd been too smart to blame himself outright for his father's shortcomings, and he was too smart, still, too smart to pretend he couldn't see the difference here.

What escaped him, what he wasn't smart enough to notice, was was the feeling of failure it smothered Paul with. He couldn't hear the question aching in him as he drove,_ why didn't you talk to me, why not call me back, why do this instead?_

His cracks were reappearing, too, faced with another young boy his guidance couldn't save.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in you," Paul said, when it was clear he wouldn't be given a more sensible defense.

Blaine answered lightly, blanched and toneless, sucker-punched by the sentiment. "Please don't say that." He couldn't take it, not from Paul, not from Paul who'd been telling him for weeks that he was special, that he was admirable, that he appreciated Blaine not letting negative situations cause him to act out against others or become detrimental to his future.

He resisted his natural sensitivity for Blaine, trying to disguise the irrational depth of his concern as fury instead. "What do you expect me to say? Well done, you've embarrassed yourself, getting high at a party like some irresponsible frat boy, and called me in the middle of the night to brag about it? I have a job, Blaine, do you understand that? I have to be up for work in three hours."

"I know you do, I didn't mean to - I wasn't thinking. But I'm still me. It's not a habit, it was a one-time thing, okay? I just wasn't thinking."

"I applaud your logic."

Blaine kicked his foot against the floormat of Paul's SUV and gestured with a frustrated hand. It was restless from leaving its fingerprints on his temple, where he'd stuck it in shame when he first got in the car, withdrawing. "Come _on_, Paul, don't you think you're overreacting even a little? I didn't shoot heroin, I didn't drive drunk, I didn't hurt anyone. Greater crimes have been committed."

With fingers poised to dial numbers into his GPS, Paul questioned abruptly, annoyed by the justification, "Where do you live?"

Blaine's face became a blurred panic, washed in the mud of expiring drunkenness. "I can't go_ home_. Jesus, I'd be dead before I hit the stairs." It was hyperbole, an empty promise, but the truth was just as upsetting. He'd be chastised, for certain, singed by the scorn of an intimidating parent, but after that. . . what? 'Grounded,' perhaps, isolated, ignored - punishments seemed only another way of getting him busy with himself, somewhere nobody needed to pay him mind.

It hadn't occurred to him when Paul picked him up that he'd be sent back to his own stifling bedroom at the end of the drive, that he'd have to come down from a substance-obscured evening in a bed of depressing realizations. He'd have hung up the phone when Paul asked how to find him, though where he expected they were going wasn't certain.

He said again, "I'm not going home. Drop me off somewhere."

Paul was exasperated, expression hard and full of dark, twisted branches, hidden in his wrinkles, reaching; he couldn't be serious. This wasn't the Blaine he knew, and he was impatient with the dimwitted doppelganger. "And a martyr on top of it all - absolutely. I'll drop you off on a street corner, how does that sound? Maybe I'll even wait until it starts_ raining_, would that complete the picture? Christ, Blaine!"

Blaine burned with embarrassment from the passenger seat, eyes shining while the words fell on him. Something sticky leftover in his blood was preventing his natural transition back to performance. If he couldn't fix this, if he couldn't make it right like he had with Jeff, like he had with Kurt, then Paul would walk away upset with him, an intolerable thought. But struggle as he did for a solution, words were escaping him; he was too tired to act. He was too tired to act like anything but the faulty, failed boy that he was.

"I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry. That's it." He slumped back down, hand at his temple again, withdrawing. "I just can't go home."

It was a bad idea. He was too angry, too emotional - this kid's behavior wasn't supposed to be of any consequence to him, and it was. Becoming any more invested in his well-being was a bad idea.

He said it anyway, as much a surprise to himself as it was to Blaine, and he was tense from the neck down as he spoke.

"Fine. You'll come home with me and sober up. I'll drive you back to your car first thing in the morning - first thing in the morning, Blaine. I can't stress to you how serious I am. As for explaining to your father why you didn't come home last night, you're on your own, but at least you won't show up half-stoned and reeking of whatever you drank."

_I drank what you drink. I don't know why. I felt a little closer to you for it._ "I'd rather not. I'm in no mood to have a sleepover with your son." Approaching sobriety, he recognized his mission for peace as a farce, as bravado. He shouldn't have called Paul to begin with, and now he'd lied to him, too.

"He's with his mother."

Silence settled between them, Paul's resolved and unflinching, Blaine's anxious and consumptive.

Paul's house, the two of them - they'd be alone. A heat stirred in Blaine, _stirred,_ kicking up between his ribs the sick-sweet sensation he got when he saw Kurt unexpectedly in the beginning of their relationship. It was a feeling that didn't belong in this car.

It was a feeling that followed him all the way to Paul's dark house.


End file.
